o 3b3e7475144cf77c полностью

Lanny had to answer no, he hadn't thought much about it. "I suppose one stands what one

has to."

Freddi persisted: "I can't help thinking about it all the time. No Jew can help it now. They

mean it to break your spirit; to wreck you for the rest of your life. And you have to set your spirit

against theirs. You have to refuse to be broken."

"It can be done," said Lanny, but rather weakly. He didn't want to think of it, at least not

while Irma was there. Irma was afraid enough already. But the Jewish lad had two thousand

years of it in his blood.

"Do you believe in the soul, Lanny? I mean, something in us that is greater than ourselves? I

have had to think a lot about it. When they take you down into the cellar, all alone, with

nobody to help you—you have no party, no comrades—it's just what you have in yourself. What I

decided is, you have to learn to pray."

"That's what Parsifal has been trying to tell us."

"I know, and I think he is right. He's the one they couldn't conquer. I'm sorry I didn't talk

more about it with him while I had the chance."

"You'll have more chances," said Lanny, with determination.

Parting is a serious matter when you have thoughts like that. Freddi said: "I oughtn't to keep

you from whatever you're planning to do. Put me off near a subway entrance and I'll ride to die

Palme."

So they drove on. Lanny said: "Cheerio," English fashion, and the young Jew replied:

"Thanks a million," which he knew was American. The car slowed up and he stepped out, and

the great hole in the Berlin sidewalk swallowed him up. Irma had a mist in her eyes, but she

winked it away and said: "I could do with some sleep." She too had learned to admire the English

manner.

IV

The Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House that afternoon and listened to Adolf Hitler's

speech on foreign affairs. The speech took three-quarters of an hour and immediately

afterward Goring moved approval, which was voted unanimously, and the Reichstag

adjourned. Soon afterward the newsboys were crying the extra editions, and there was the full

text, under banner headlines. Of course these gleichgeschaltete papers called it the most

extraordinary piece of statesmanship.

Lanny glanced through it swiftly, and saw that it was a speech like none other in the Führer's

career. It was the first time he had ever read a prepared address; as it happened, the

Wilhelmstrasse, the German foreign office, had put pressure on him and persuaded him that there

was real danger of overt action by France. The Fatherland had no means of resisting, and

certainly it was the last thing the infant Nazi regime wanted.

So here was a new Hitler. Such a convenient thing to be able to be something new whenever

you wished, unhampered by anything you had been hitherto! The Führer spoke more in sorrow

than in anger of the wrongs his country had suffered, and he told the Reichstag that he was a man

utterly devoted to peace and justice among the nations; all he asked of the rest of the world was

that it should follow the example of Germany and disarm. There was to be no more "force"

among the nations; he called this "the eruption of insanity without end," and said that it would

result in "a Europe sinking into Communistic chaos."

France and Britain, which had been worried, breathed a sigh of relief. The Führer really

wasn't as bad as he had been painted; his soup wasn't going to scald anybody's tongue. He would

settle down and let others write his speeches for him and govern the country sanely. To the

diplomats and statesmen of foreign lands it was obvious that a mere corporal and painter of

picture-postcards couldn't manage a great modern state. That called for trained men, and

Germany had plenty of them. In an emergency they would take control.

Lanny wasn't sure about it; but he saw that today's speech was the best possible of omens for

the Robin family. Adi was singing low; he wouldn't want any family rows, any scandals going

out to the world; he was in a position where he could be mildly and politely blackmailed, and

Lanny had an idea how to set about it.

The telephone rang. His note to Heinrich Jung had been delivered promptly. Heinrich had

attended the Reichstag meeting, and now he was taking the first opportunity to call his friend.

"Oh, Lanny, the most marvelous affair! Have you read the speech?"

"Indeed I have, and I consider it a great piece of statesmanship."

"Wundervoll!" exclaimed Heinrich.

"Kolossal!" echoed Lanny. In German you sing it, with the accent on the last syllable,

prolonging it like a tenor.

"Ganz grosse Staatskunst!"

"Absolut!" Another word which you accent on the last syllable; it sounds like a popgun.

"Wirkliches Genie!" declared the Nazi official.

So they chanted in bel canto, like a love duet in Italian opera. They sang the praises of Adolf,

his speech, his party, his doctrine, his Fatherland. Heinrich, enraptured, exclaimed: "You really

see it now!"

"I didn't think he could do it," admitted the genial visitor.